Something that has been bugging me since the first time I ran Dark Heresy is how crap the way BI/FFG stat'd out their bad guys. I think they way they do it is fine for PCs but for NPCs, you need either an encyclopedic knowledge of talents and traits or you need to keep flicking back and forth between the talents and traits page and the backs of your books.

I was wondering if you guys have come up with a new way of giving NPC stats that make it a one stop reference for a game? I am thinking along the lines of the change WotC made towards the very end of 3.5 D&D that made a world of difference. For combat, all the info was their factored into their attacks and the like, with whatever relevant non-combat info down the bottom. No messy blocks of text that you had to sift through to get what you wanted.

And if one of the designers from FFG is looking, please apply your excellent game design brains towards this important task. It would make running your brilliant games that much easier.

Hi carrot,

to me, the stat blocks aren´t that bad. Funny thing is that the majority of the "rank and file" npc do not have so many talents to begin with.

After a couple of dozen repititions of reading the talents, it thinks in quiet firmly.

No, really. I do not think it is that bad.

But since you are looking on improvement, my advise would be to change the "multi-attack-talents" simply to exactly that "Multi-Attack 3". So, you know by first look how many attack roles a critter/npc brings to bear when spending a full action.

Mighty Shot/Mighty blow or normally alread incorporated into the damage stat. I normally omit the "Weapon Talents" since I assume that they can handle any weapon they are equipped with...

...but as soon as FFG starts to adept this, the complaints will start about how and why an npc is equipped with this weapon if he is "sans talent"

Well, and they might want to deliberately give a character a weapon they are useless with, so if they don't mention weapon talents there is not way to show this (ok... they could just say they don't have the requisite ability). However, yes, most times they will be, and the basic guys' main talents are their weapon ones.

My suggestion would just be to set a little more time aside for preparation and check up what talents have relevant effects before the game. Have your NPCs drawn up on a seperate piece of paper with straightforward talents (like the ones which add damage) already factored in (one of the problems is that they are inconsistant about this... sometimes it is included in damage stats, other times they are not), and only list those (relevant) talents which have less straight forward effects, maybe taking note of what they do. Irrelevant talents and skills (say a talent relating to convincing crowds when all they are going to be used for is as combat cannon fodder) can be left off, streamlining it further.

More work, but means less flicking through the book while playing. This of course cannot help you if you are just picking things randomly on the fly.

Yeah, that is essentially what I started doing, creating my own quick-run statblock for combat and other high-speed encounters. Damage boosts, number of attacks, bonuses and penalties to hit etc already included, even had BS and Distance marked out for each range increment. Although there were a couple issues of forgotten things, it made combat a hell of a lot easier to run. Particularly given that where we play, my GM seat doesn’t have a huge amount of table room.

Carrot: Good idea. I only play every other week and I'm always forgetting to use talents for my NPCs, making them weaker than they should be.

I've been preparing index cards just like I've been doing with my endeavours when I run them. I list weapons, most used special abilities and skills, important traits, wounds, and armor. If it doesn't fit on the card, it's not worth knowing, so I try to only list stuff that's going to be relevant (usually only combat-oriented stuff).

The cards look something like this:

Lined Side:

Enemy Name/Type (Wounds / Armor)

>Attributes listed out with unnatural attributes notated as such<

Skills Block | Traits Block

-Blank Side:

Weapons Block

Special Powers/Psyker Powers/etc.

-

I prep things beforehand, sometimes a couple weeks in advance (since I generally know what direction they'll be going once they've committed to a task). I also have a few "generic" foe cards, so over time I've built up a small stable of "mook" cards I can pull out when I want to do something outside the story's flow to slow things down, or when the PCs surprise me and do something unexpected. Taking an hour just to pre-prep once a week goes a long way to making things crisp when we get down to business.